Archives for October 2005

The Kelo backlash (and yes, I know many of you do not like it when I use the word backlash) continues, with Kevin Drum highlighting another outrage:

THE BEST KELO CASE YET….For those of you who felt that I was insufficiently outraged over the Kelo eminent domain decision, I’ve got just the story for you. This isn’t about a city condemning blighted land for redevelopment. It’s not even about a city condemning good land for redevelopment. It’s about a city condemning good land for a project that’s almost identical to the project the land’s current owner wants to put up himself. The city is Union Township in New Jersey and the owner is Carol Segal:

On May 24, the five-member township committee voted unanimously to authorize the municipality to seize Segal’s land through eminent domain and name its own developer.

“They want to steal my land,” Segal said. “What right do they have when I intend to do the exact same thing they want to do with my property?”

…. Segal…signed a contract last week to sell his property to Centex Homes for about $13 million, contingent upon local approval. Centex, a nationally known developer with projects in Middlesex, Morris and Monmouth counties, would then build 100 townhouses on Segal’s property….

Florio and Capodice [the mayor and deputy mayor] said they preferred AMJM because it is a local company.

“I’ve never heard of Centex,” Capodice said. “They’re not Union County people.”

It’s worth noting that the Star-Ledger story quoted above strongly implies that there’s some fairly sleazy political corruption involved in all this, and it’s possible that this might be a bigger factor than the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kelo. Hey, this is Jersey we’re talking about.

And here is another one for you:

Florida’s Riviera Beach is a poor, predominantly black, coastal community that intends to revitalize its economy by using eminent domain, if necessary, to displace about 6,000 local residents and build a billion-dollar waterfront yachting and housing complex.

“This is a community that’s in dire need of jobs, which has a median income of less than $19,000 a year,” said Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown.

He defends the use of eminent domain by saying the city is “using tools that have been available to governments for years to bring communities like ours out of the economic doldrums and the trauma centers.”

Mr. Brown said Riviera Beach is doing what the city of New London, Conn., is trying to do and what the U.S. Supreme Court said is proper in its ruling June 23 in Kelo v. City of New London. That decision upheld the right of government to seize private properties for use by private developers for projects designed to generate jobs and increase the tax base.

“Now eminent domain is affecting people who never had to deal with it before and who have political connections,” Mr. Brown said. “But if we don’t use this power, cities will die.”

Jacqui Loriol insists she and her husband will fight the loss of their 80-year-old home in Riviera Beach.

“This is a very [racially] mixed area that’s also very stable,” she said. “But no one seems to care … Riviera Beach needs economic redevelopment. But there’s got to be another way.”

The city is going to confiscate 2000 homes in the name of economic development (my soulmates at Q and O covered this yesterday). For those of you who remain unconvinced, here is another tale for you:

While planning for a new Dallas Cowboys stadium, Mayor Robert Cluck said the city would use eminent domain only as a last resort to assemble the needed land.

But condemnation has become the rule rather than the exception.

The City Council has condemned or sought to condemn more than three-quarters of the properties it has acted on in the past four months, an analysis has found.

“We were hoping that this would be the last resort,” Dr. Cluck said last week. “We were hoping there would be more willing sellers.”

He said that before the land acquisition started, city officials had no idea what percentage of property owners would sell willingly.

Although the number of condemnations is much higher than he would like, Dr. Cluck said, the city is making fair offers, and sometimes eminent domain is the only option.

Glenn Sodd, an attorney representing some people in the affected area, said the high percentage of eminent domain cases shows that the city has low-balled residents and business owners and that its incentive program is inadequate.

“The offers obviously aren’t sufficient otherwise they wouldn’t be hiring lawyers and forcing condemnations to be filed,” Mr. Sodd said.

In comparable cases, he said, he would expect three-quarters or more of the property owners to sell and the rest to go to court, not the other way around.

In fairness, the last story can not be traced directly to the Kelo decision, but it is a shocking display of what governments will do- to give away land and money to billionaire sports team owners.

The good news is that you can act, you can do something, and that people are sick of this and demanding changes. Recent polling data shows the attitude of folks in New Jersey:

Overwhelming majorities of New Jerseyans said in a recent poll the local government power of eminent domain is being abused and benefits only private developers.

The widespread distaste for eminent domain, taking private land for projects serving the public good, emerged in a newly released poll by Monmouth University and the Gannett New Jersey newspapers.

For example, about nine of every 10 adults who know the issue say it is wrong to take low-value homes to build a shopping center. A similar majority — 86 percent — say it is wrong to bulldoze a low-value home in order to replace it with a higher-value unit.

But 88 percent said it was OK to take vacant and run-down buildings to build a school, while 65 percent said it was OK to take land from a developer to preserve open space.

All over the country, however, municipalities and legislatures are acting to reign in eminent domain in the wake of the Kelo decision. You can check Google News every day, and you will find more and more stories like this, in Connecticut:

Cities and towns in Connecticut are taking the lead in seeking to block their own officials from seizing private property for the benefit of developers.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June allowed New London to raze a neighborhood to build a privately owned hotel and office space that officials say could add millions of dollars to the tax base. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that states may enact additional laws restricting condemnations if residents are overly burdened.

The General Assembly has yet to act, with Republican lawmakers seeking a binding moratorium on property seizures until the state’s eminent domain laws can be reviewed. Democrats held two public hearings during the summer and called on state and municipal leaders to voluntarily halt any eminent domain proceedings.

Or this, in Ohio:

Legislation to place a one-year hold on using eminent domain for economic development could hit the Ohio Senate floor by Wednesday.

Senate Bill 167, introduced in August, calls for a moratorium on the government’s ability to seize homes and businesses for economic development in non-blighted areas. Legislators propose to use that year to examine Ohio’s eminent domain laws and recommend any changes needed to better protect private property owners.

Or this, in St. Louis:

An effort to put new restrictions on the use of eminent domain in unincorporated areas of St. Charles County began Monday night at a County Council work session.

Council Chairman Doug Funderburk and Councilman Joe Brazil submitted separate proposals after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that said governments can take private property for purposes of economic development.

And Maryland:

A Maryland state senator plans to introduce legislation that would make it tougher for governments to seize private property to make way for shopping malls and condominium complexes.

Sen. James E. DeGrange Sr., an Anne Arundel Democrat, wants to keep the state from broadening its power of eminent domain as a result of a recent controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision that has pitted urban renewal proponents against private property advocates.

I could go on and on. It is important to make sure you act quickly and forcefully to protest and slow the horrible abuses listed in the first half of this post, but be mindful that pro-active steps are much more important. Push the changes in eminent domain use through local and state governments is much easier and useful than fighting case by case rear-guard actions after the abuses occur.

So, take the fight to your local government. Vote in city and state elections, because, in reality, they are more important than federal elections.

And keep your head up- we are going to win this.

Kelo and Eminent DomainPost + Comments (67)

Chief Justice Roberts will visit the first politically charged case in his young career today, when the SCOTUS hears arguments regarding the Oregon physician-assisted suicide provision:

The Supreme Court will revisit the emotionally charged issue of physician-assisted suicide in a test of the federal government’s power to block doctors from helping terminally ill patients end their lives.

Oregon is the only state that lets dying patients obtain lethal doses of medication from their doctors, although other states may pass laws of their own if the high court rules against the federal government. Voters in Oregon have twice endorsed doctor-assisted suicide, but the Bush administration has aggressively challenged the state law.

The case, the first major one to come before the new chief justice, John Roberts, will be heard by justices touched personally by illness. Three justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens have had cancer, and a fourth Stephen Breyer has a spouse who counsels young cancer patients who are dying.

Their longtime colleague, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who once wrote about the “earnest and profound debate” over doctor-assisted suicide, died a month ago after battling untreatable cancer for nearly a year.

Pretty obviously, I support the right for people to end their misery, or at least have the option to end their misery, and if we want to talk about basic rights, I feel that individuals should have the basic right to control their own destiny (whether or not that is reflected in the Constitution is another matter). That isn’t what this case is about, per se, as this is really about whether federal drug laws can dictate how state authorities behave.

In other words, it is another example of the so called advocates of ‘states rights’ throwing principle out the window to cater to their pet issues and radical base. That in and of itself is enough to irritate me, but when you couple this attitude with the fact that the same crowd has been waging war on physicians through the DEA’s war on doctors and patients (and if you do not read Radley Balko’s The Agititator, you are really missing out- he has done a tremendous job following the prosecution of doctors), and you understand why this issue makes me even angrier.

For whatever reason, vocal advocates within the ‘pro-life’ community are against assisted suicide, but are also against adequate pain treatment- or at least the real worry is that dying patients might get addicted to pain medicine. The attitude of some, it seems, is that you are supposed to die, in pain, helpless, desperate, and without proper relief, because that is how Christ would have wanted you to go.

And that sends me into what can only be described as a volcanic rage.

Oregon’s Assisted Suicide LawPost + Comments (194)

Matt Welch, at Reason magazine, interviews Louisiana National Guardsman Major Ed Bush, and some of the answers will surprise you:

Reason: Which gets me back to the specific helicopter thing. That report came out on September 1 or so; it was, you know, “Evacuation Halted at Superdome Because of Shots Fired at Military Helicopter.”

Bush: Yeah. In eight days inside the Superdome, there was no gunfire, there were no battles. There was one incident where…somebody had a pole from one of the cots, and I think [our] security guy might have surprised him; they opened the door and he came at him. And the Guardsmen got hit, and there was water down there, and I think slipping and pulling and this and that, and three rounds went off and one of them went into the Guardsmen’s legs. More or less he shot himself.

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, things continue to get worse for New Orleans residents:

The mayor of this battered city said Tuesday that about half of its 6,000 public employees would be laid off because there was not enough money to meet the payroll.

“Today it’s with great sadness that we announce that we were unable to hold on to some of our dedicated city workers,” Mayor C. Ray Nagin said.

The layoffs – emergency leave without pay – will begin Oct. 8 and leave about 3,000 nonessential workers unemployed when completed in about two weeks. Final paychecks will be issued this month.

Workers in essential services like fire, police, emergency medical, and sewage and water services will not be affected, the mayor’s communications director, Sally Forman, said.

How long is going to take for this city to recover? Will it recover?

More here from the Instapundit.

The SuperDome MythsPost + Comments (20)